Selection Panel: Selection Entities and Mode

Description

The selection panel consists of two sets of icons:

  1. Entities icons, each of which represents an entity type in the model (i.e., node, beam, plate, brick, link, vertex, geometry face, path); and
  2. Mode icons, which control the selection mode (i.e., how the selection state of entities is changed by the Selection Panel: Selection Functions).

The icons that represent the entity types have two purposes:

  1. to set the entity types that can be selected or unselected by the Selection Panel: Selection Functions; and
  2. to set the entity types that can be inspected by default via the Straus7 Interface: Entity Inspector.

Panel

Entities icons

If an icon is active (pressed), the corresponding entity may be selected or unselected.

If an icon is not active, the selection functions do not affect the corresponding entity, except for the Selection Functions: Clear All Selections, which clears selections irrespective of the state of the entities icons.

To activate multiple entity types simultaneously, hold down the Ctrl key and click the required icons in turn.

To activate a single entity type while deactivating all others, no matter the current state of the icons, hold down the Shift key and click the required icon.

The following keyboard shortcuts may be used to toggle these icons:

Entities popup menu

For beams, plates, bricks, links and geometry faces, a right-click option is available on each icon, which opens a popup menu of additional entity-specific options. The availability of the popup menu is signified via the small arrow on the bottom-right corner of the icon.

Invert selection

When a selection function is executed on an entity, the selection status of the entity is toggled (i.e., switched) between the selected and unselected states. That is, an unselected entity will become selected, and a selected entity will become unselected.

Always select

When a selection function is executed on an entity, the selection status of the entity is always set to selected, irrespective of the entity's selection state prior to the execution of the selection function.

Always clear

When a selection function is executed on an entity, the selection status of the entity is always set to unselected, irrespective of the entity's selection state prior to the execution of the selection function.

See Also